OK I have to do a daylog now, even though I don't really have the time. It's just too coincidental that I, too, have recently started a new job. And I have some comments on Mitzi's daylog I'd like to get off of my chest, too.
First of all, the entire story of me getting this new job can be found here and, a sorta related daylog can be found here. Anyway, congratulations, lovejoyman, I feel your pain of previously having a shitty job and feel your pleasure - no, elation - of having one that you love. It's almost freaky, how I can almost copy and paste exactly a paragraph from lovejoyman's entry and have it apply perfectly to my situation. Changes I've made are in parentheses:
"Finally, after reams of resumes and (one interview), a great company that likes me as much as I like them hired me. Terrific benefits, a substantial jump in pay, intellectually rigorous and satisfying work, a defined career and skill development path as well as smart and hilarious people with whom to work -- it's a dream come true.
Yep. I hear ya, lovejoy. Fuckin' eh. A dream come true indeed. Only difference is I only scored one interview, but one was, as it turns out, all I needed. There are so many things that this new company (Roundedcube) does right that my former company did wrong. My former company appears to have more clients, but it's quantity vs. quality here: my new company has bigger, more serious clients. Huge multinational corporations. They charge more than my former company, but offer their clients so much more. They fully integrate everybody into a Content Mangement System and have the manpower to do so. My former company started getting into CMS but only offered it as an extra charge to some clients, and then only some areas of the website were converted into CMS and one guy had to slave away at trying to program them all and got yelled at for not being able to finish it for four clients at once. Oh yeah and my current boss is so much nicer! And more reasonable.
Plus, this job is in a much nicer area, in a building that has central air and heating! (Not an old falling-apart warehouse with crumbling drab military green lead paint.) And it is in a much nicer area. No more getting my license plates and/or stickers ripped off (or the entire car!). Just in general, the business I work for now is much more serious and professional: they pay serious money and get more serious clients. However, in some ways it's not so serious. We have nerf basketball tournaments in the hallway! These people actually have fun. I'm no longer in a hostile environment! My old boss was a tightass who hardly ever wanted to invest some money and time into improving the technologies he worked with, the methods, and the people he worked with. Sometimes you have to operate in a deficit to get a better business in the end, something he didn't seem to understand. If he's ever going to compete with the company I work for now, he's going to have to get out of that shitty warehouse and pay more money to attract better and more employees and actually spend some money to improve technology and service. And then charge more, perhaps. Oh and he might want to reconsider cussing out clients on the phone, even if they might deserve it.
But enough about him. That place is in my past where I plan on keeping it. The place I'm with now offers me opportunities to grow, to learn more, spread my wings a little and work with unstifled creativity. My new boss actually is a web designer and understands the process. We actually have brainstorming sessions here! My old boss never had time for brainstorming, for employees sitting around talking with each other, bouncing ideas off of each other. It's just a wonderful feeling, isn't it, lovejoyman, to actually look forward to work, look forward to Mondays, not dread them? It's very motivating and creatively stimulating. My muse is no longer working overtime. I feel needed, wanted here; I may have been needed and wanted before but I just didn't feel like I was. I felt like I was unappreciated even though it may not have been the case.
All right, I could probably go on and on, but I'll stop there on that. Now, onto comments on Mitzi's entry today.
First of all, take a deep breath, Mitz. Chill a little. I understand that you were just noding what you feel and you can't say how somebody is feeling is right or wrong. I get that. But I felt like you were being overdramatic. I mean, I get some of the sentiments you expressed; this place can be cold and contemptual at times; there are cliques here just like in real life. They're inescapable, if you really think about it.
But I try to ignore the elitist assholes, the ones who sit in their sky-high thrones built on piles and piles of writeups and xp and look down at the rest of us through their noses. Just as much as I try to ignore the trolls. I cannot even believe that there are noders who feel that using emoticons in the catbox are somehow childish or immature, that standards of casual communication should be on par with factual nodes, that we should be able to accurately depict the emotional context of what we're saying with careful word choice. I'm sorry, I don't feel like doing research when I'm just trying to exchange friendly banter in the catbox, thank you! Emoticons are very useful to text-based communication to make up for the lack of voice inflection and body language you can use to read people in real life.
Sorry I got a little off track there with my mini rant on emoticons.
The point is, Mitzi, yes, sometimes this place can feel cold, especially if nodes on your life are downvoted; I appreciate how it can feel like they're downvoting your life. But, unless they're really, extremely good or clever or witty or written in such a away to where it can apply to any of our lives and we can all relate to it, keep them in a daylog. It's what daylogs are for! It is because we have daylogs that Getting to Know You - "GTKY" - nodes are frowned upon. Why should you feel so cast off or shunned because you should relegate those types of nodes to daylogs? You are acting like we're forcing you to some noder's dungeon or something. Daylogs are great. I love writing them. Sometimes I do have to repost gooofy and funny crap to a daylog that was eaten if it had enough fans. But a lot of them, like this one, are about my life and have no place in their own nodes.
Even though I can agree with some of the things they say, whenever I come upon any of these "This place sucks now, I'm leaving, it's no fun anymore!" nodes, I just kind of (sorry!) roll my eyes. This place is great! Granted, I've only been around since September of 2003, maybe it was a lot different before then, but, still, what's the big honkin' deal? There's still plenty of fun to be had here. There's still nodes that are funny that aren't eaten. Some of them are factuals, even. Factuals can be boring, depends on who's writing them. But they can also be compelling, funny, and witty. That is what makes this place, still, so much better than Wikipedia. And even poems can survive if they're good enough!
Again, I could go on and on and on, but I'll stop there. Just know that something terrible and disasterous would have to happen to this place before I'd ever leave.